The most unusual objects doctors have removed from patients
Remember that scene in Jaws when Richard Dreyfuss removes the contents of a shark’s stomach? He pulls out everything but the kitchen sink. (Not really, but it’s that extreme.)
Apparently, many doctors know the feeling.
In a blog that appears on Sermo, a website for doctors, an anesthesiologist recently shared details about a surgery where he helped a urologist remove a crochet needle from a young woman’s bladder.
So he asked readers: “What is the most unusual thing you have pulled out of a patient?”
“Kitchen sink” wasn’t on the list of more than 230 responses, but that’s about the only thing that wasn’t on the list.
Here are a few choice items…
- Barbie doll
- Live fish
- Silica gel moisture-prevention packet, printed with the words “do not swallow”
- String of pearls
- Crayons
- Five pens, two permanent markers, three straws, two toothbrushes, and four cookie wrappers–all removed from the stomach of one patient during a single procedure
- Foam fishing lure
- Inflated balloon
- Canned peach
- Chicken wishbone
- Wedding band
Of course, kids inhale the darndest things. One doctor said he removed a plastic helicopter from a child’s nose. Another young man swallowed two toy dogs. He told the doctor he swallowed the second so the first one wouldn’t be alone.
One patient was cured of a chronic cough when a seashell was removed from his lung, a full YEAR after a trip to the beach.
My favorite: Five percent of the respondents wrote something along these lines: “Hospital administrator’s own head.”
